


either I've turned stupid (or life's turned hard)

by rain_sleet_snow



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Star Wars - All Media Types, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Coming of Age, Crossover, Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Families of Choice, Gen, Jedi, M/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Twins, jedi order
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-30 01:05:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19031593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: 1) Alanna and Thom of Trebond arrive at the Temple in Coruscant under the aegis of Baird Queenscove, senior medical professor and lecturer to the Jedi MedCorps, who typically has absolutely fuck-all to do with Jedi Search but who found himself on Trebond, on the continent that gave the planet its name, at the capital city of the man who rules over most of that continent. He was trying to meet up with an old classmate from medical school, onlya) She was deadb) She had twins before she diedc) Her husband appears to be a complete dickd) The twins are four years old and have not had any immunisations.2) Baird does not freak out or yell, despite grievous temptation.***Flashes and snaps of Tortallan characters in the Star Wars universe.





	1. Alanna the Jedi

**Author's Note:**

> Collected from my Bits and Pieces collections, because it was getting unwieldy and unclear and there are now enough bits to put it all together and add to that.

  * Alanna and Thom of Trebond arrive at the Temple in Coruscant under the aegis of Baird Queenscove, senior medical professor and lecturer to the Jedi MedCorps, who typically has absolutely fuck-all to do with Jedi Search but who found himself on Trebond, on the continent that gave the planet its name, at the capital city of the man who rules over most of that continent. He was trying to meet up with an old classmate from medical school, only 
    1. She was dead
    2. She had twins before she died
    3. Her husband appears to be a complete dick
    4. The twins are four years old and have not had any immunisations.


  * Baird does not freak out or yell, despite grievous temptation.


  * He starts the immunisations and does the midichlorian test mostly out of absence of mind while thinking about what it would take, really, to adopt a pair of twins, and exactly how mad his wife would be if he did, and whether the twins would adapt to Coruscant’s total absence of natural light, and then his machine gives off this godawful beeping noise and Baird’s head whips round so hard his neck creaks.


  * The twins’ numbers are off the scale. 
    1. This is sort of a relief. Being a Jedi is an excellent higher purpose, they will be a nice long way away from Thom Sr (obscure but heavyweight philosopher of the Force and galactic-calibre asshole), Marinie would have been proud, and also Baird can keep an eye on them.
    2. Correctly divining from “It is clearly my duty to let them go, don’t forget their droids,” that Thom Sr will do absolutely nothing to create an attachment with the twins, Baird advises the Jedi at the Temple that they have functionally no family.


  * Knowing the Jedi, and also having some experience of Trebond twins in confined quarters, he keeps the droids until the twins are padawans at least and does not mention that he will be looking in on them. At least to keep an eye on their vaccination schedule. Baird can waffle about quarantine and naïve immune systems with the best of them.


  * Fast-forward ten years.


  * Alanna has never had to hide her sex or gender (she is probably just as ambivalent as she is in canon, but not because society wants to stuff her into skirts and marry her off). No. What she has a problem with is her character. Far more open and popular than her cool, rather sarcastic brother, she has a suspicious nature, the temper of a fiend and the sheer tenacity and physical prowess to back it up. This means she has a problem with 
    1. **Roald** , head of the Order, weary and persecuted and typically known as the Peacemaker, has never forgiven himself for a long-dead and unacknowledged relationship with Senator Lianne Naxen, whose son and probable heir Jonathan definitely does not bear any close resemblance to the Peacemaker
    2. **Ralon** , a would-be padawan who is still picking on younglings half his size
    3. **Gareth Naxen** , much older brother to That Senator and close friend to the Peacemaker despite everything, whose own son Gary is freely acknowledged because Gareth does not run away from his problems or his failings, and who would like Alanna of Trebond to please just stop making so much trouble and start living up to her talent.


  * Alanna literally cannot sneeze without being reprimanded for it, especially once she makes a lightsabre and it is purple and everyone is worried about her Falling. She was once confined to the Temple because a goddamned tooka cat with purple eyes took to following her everywhere.


  * Alanna maintains that is not her fault, but does that stop the Peacemaker blaming her for it? 
    1. No.
    2. She still has the tooka cat.
    3. His name is Faithful. He is extremely clever and he once scratched Ralon’s face.


  * Thom, meanwhile, is detached as all hell, he is conforming beautifully to the Jedi lessons, Alanna is very proud.


  * She is even more proud when Duke Roger, brother to Roald, who long ago left the Order to take up his responsibilities as Duke of Conté, returns to Coruscant. 
    1. Duke Roger is impressed by Thom, which is only as it should be.
    2. Duke Roger does give Alanna the vague creeps, but her visions have never been much of anything and one must be rational and a good Jedi, therefore –
    3. Duke Roger takes Thom as his padawan when Alanna and Thom are twelve, which is good, obviously, but
    4. Alanna is left behind.


  * She worries. A lot. Thom says she can just go back to Trebond and be the lady of Trebond, somebody needs to run the damn continent, she could be in the Senate one day –


  * But Thom is a mystic who would be happy with nothing but his books and Alanna has never wanted anything other than to be a Jedi Knight.


  * She gets all the way to her thirteenth birthday, makes her one last act as a Jedi beating up Ralon in a rational and scientific manner because she caught him picking on a nine-year-old Twi’lek, and is claimed as a padawan by her history teacher before Gareth can even draw breath to yell. 
    1. Ralon ages out of the Order four days later and Alanna almost feels sorry for him.
    2. Ten years later, during the Clone Wars, Ralon comes for her with glowing eyes. She kills him. He does not give up his master’s name, but he laughs and laughs and laughs while he dies.


  * Alanna is delighted to be chosen, but also puzzled, and does not want to be a historian, but there are few people she trusts (except maybe Gary and Thom, and Baird, who is still dropping in on her on a regular basis) and Myles is one of them. 
    1. Myles says 
      1. “Come on, padawan, you can’t mean to say you’ve never visited the lower levels of Coruscant”
      2. and that’s how Alanna ends up making friends with a lady called Eleni who has a loving son named George who isn’t around but writes a lot, and when George turns up she finds herself drinking in all sorts of dodgy places and learning a large number of things not on the Temple curriculum.
    2. Myles also says 
      1. “Padawan, part of independent learning is learning to find your own teachers: may I suggest we visit the Shang so you can improve your sabercraft”
      2. “I’m aware that the Shang are wild Force users, why do you mention it?”
      3. “The Peacemaker doesn’t need to know and neither, I would suggest, does Duke Roger”
      4. “If it’s calling to you and it doesn’t feel Dark, it certainly doesn’t to me, pick it up


  * and that’s how Alanna ends up with a lightsabre which is at least a thousand years old and fits in her hand like it was made for her, and surprise surprise, is _also_ purple.


  * Myles says


  *     * “Now, I think it’s time you assisted me with one of my information-gathering trips to the Senate”
    * and that’s how Alanna meets Senator Naxen, who looks fragile as a wisp and has very sharp eyes and pacifist views that make the Peacemaker look milquetoast.


  * Myles says
  *     * “I am perfectly happy for you to own droids, your possessions are not my concern unless they explode in our suite”
    * and that’s how Baird gives Alanna CO-R4M and M0D-E for her eighteenth birthday.


  * and lastly Myles says 
    1. “Senator Naxen has sent me an urgent transmission: she seems calm but has used some of our danger codes, and I have never in my life had a good feeling about Geonosis”
    2. “Yes, of course the Council are aware we’re going, and happily the Peacemaker is not stupid enough to turn his principles on Gareth when Lianne Naxen’s life is on the line"
    3. “Pack both your lightsabers, we’re leaving now”
    4. and that’s how Alanna ends up saving Jonathan Naxen’s life and being knighted for her experiences.


  * It’s safe to say Alanna’s apprenticeship was… eventful. (Baird still thinks Marinie would have been proud.)


  * But the funny thing is. 
    1. Alanna was knighted because of all the work she has already stacked up, and because against all the odds she managed to defeat the Mandalorian who fought with the Geonosians and capture the Geonosian who killed Senator Naxen, and like a proper Jedi she did not lose her cool and kill him, she brought him to justice. 
      1. Plus some trials, about which Alanna never intends to speak, and which involved more zombies than she cares to reflect on.
    2. Except… the Geonosian died on the way back to Coruscant.
    3. It could have been him. He was there. 
      1. But Alanna didn’t see him kill Senator Naxen. She heard Senator Naxen say “I am not, and have never been, afraid of you.” And then she felt Senator Naxen die.
    4. Did Senator Naxen know Geonosians? She must have done. She negotiated with them.


  * Duke Roger and Thom were first on the scene.


  * Alanna is letting her attachments, or maybe just her bad judgement, cloud her thinking. She does not let them cloud her actions.


  * Alanna wants a clone regiment but she doesn’t get one. 
    1. (Gary does. His Clone Commander is much bigger than the average clone, but also a better commander than anyone else, so he got away with the genetic abnormality. Gary gives him books and holonews feeds so he can Better Himself, and out of revenge CC-6679 names himself after the trashiest demi-celebrity he can find, Raoul Gold.)


  * What Alanna does get is the chance to heal, and to fight in the darkest corners of the galaxy, and to work with Baird, and Gary and Raoul, and Jonathan 
    1. Who is now Jon
    2. Who has the bluest eyes she’s ever seen
    3. Who is fighting for peace in the Senate
    4. Who is a wild Force user, because there was always a strong thread of it in the Naxens, and because there was a lot more to Lianne Naxen that met the eye – and obviously that means there’s a lot he can learn from Alanna
    5. Who is, a year into the war, Alanna’s lover.


  * Alanna tries not to be attached. She tries to be a good Jedi. But she knows she will never be as good as Thom, as detached, refined, scholarly… 
    1. That’s okay. Alanna has never thought she was half the Jedi Thom is.
    2. Alanna is just happy to be contributing to the war effort.
    3. Alanna is proud to fight for the Republic.


  * The tide of war keeps advancing. Alanna sacrifices sweat and blood to it. Jonathan, in company with older and more experienced politicians, starts the Council of 2000. 
    1. They argue about that. Alanna believes in the war, even if she’s not sure whether there aren’t other ways -
    2. They argue a lot anyway. It lends spice to life. What difference does one small row make?


  * It takes her and Myles and Jonathan the best part of four years, but eventually they find out who is behind the war. It doesn’t help that Jonathan has trouble believing it. Duke Roger has always been good to his unacknowledged cousin, even before Jonathan swept into his mother’s vacated seat on a wave of popularity and surprising acumen.


  * Alanna goes into shock. And then she goes to the Jedi Council. 
    1. They also have trouble believing it, especially the Peacemaker, who trusts his brother. They confront Duke Roger.
    2. Duke Roger’s eyes turn gold. He kills the Peacemaker and Gareth of Naxen.
    3. He trips Order 66 and a thousand Jedi die. 
      1. Raoul, who experienced a severe head injury months beforehand, is the only one of his regiment not to turn a blaster on Gary. Raoul stops a thousand becoming a thousand and one.
    4. Alanna confronts Thom, and Duke Roger draws on the bonds he has created with Thom to turn him against even his sister. As Thom’s eyes turn gold, Alanna turns her lightsabre on him.
    5. If she didn’t have two she would be dead. Because she does, Thom is.


  * Alanna escapes Coruscant alive, with Myles, thanks to Eleni. Whose raffish son is apparently sneakier than Alanna knew.


  * She finds Jonathan later, as the Alliance to Restore the Republic takes shape. Something has changed, though. 
    1. Maybe it’s that he’s hiding in plain sight in the Imperial Senate and their relationship is too great a risk.
    2. Maybe it’s that Alanna is grieving.
    3. Maybe it’s that Alanna is constantly on the run from Emperor Roger and his feared Black Hand, who seems to have a special hatred for her.
    4. Maybe it’s that they’ve both grown up.


  * Whatever it is, it’s easier to face this new war with Eleni’s scapegrace smuggler son sliding a plate of food in front of her at the end of the day and Raoul talking through battle plans than it is to cling to the empty comfort of Jonathan’s sweet, distant, encrypted words.


  * Especially when the holonews says he’s dating an Imperial favourite. 
    1. Alanna doesn’t care about Josiane.
    2. She doesn’t, okay.


  * The galaxy is dark, and full of terrors. It’s not the one she grew up in. Maybe that’s just because it’s more honest: Alanna saw a thing or two at Myles’s side.


  * But if there’s one thing Alanna still believes in it is hope. 
    1. There will be new hope.
    2. If Alanna has to carve it out of the sky with both of her lightsabers herself, there _will be_ new hope.




	2. Kalasin the Senator, Thom the Smuggler, and Kel the Jedi Knight

This is the thing about **Kalasin Naxen**.

  * She was always supposed to be a politician. 
    1. Just not like this.
    2. Her marriage was not supposed to be the most valuable thing she brought to the table.
    3. But when the Emperor says  _jump_ , everyone else says  _how high_ , especially if the Black Hand is in the room.


  * She is the daughter of brilliant politicians. Of Jonathan Naxen, son of the martyred Senator Lianne, who has led his system for more than twenty years and has not died or been pushed out of office yet. Of Thayet jian Wilina, whose foremothers fled the Mandalorian Civil Wars for Alderaan, where Thayet learned what it is to fight for peace. 
    1. There are whole strings of orphanages and schools across the galaxy that bear Thayet's name.
    2. The history of Naxen is covered over in her father's.
    3. Her family is synonymous with her planet.
    4. Kalasin is meant to be just as brilliant. She wants to be, she will be -


  * When Kalasin is only nineteen and a junior senator, the oldest of a promising cohort of Naxen children with public service written all over them, the Emperor says that his ally needs an heir, and as such, his heir presumptive needs a wife. 
    1. Jonathan Naxen tries hard to refuse.
    2. He loves his daughter, so it's probably not that he didn't try hard enough.
    3. Kalasin Naxen is left with nothing to hope for except that Kaddar Iliniat will be kind.


  * Kalasin is a good girl and she doesn’t cry.


  * Nor does she allude to the Rebel work she knows is going on around her even though she is not supposed to know about it and certainly isn't allowed to take part, especially not now she will be married into the lineage of one of the Emperor's closest allies.
  *     1. Her "I don't know what you're talking about," to Moff Tarkin is wholly genuine
    2. He tortures her anyway
    3. And then he shows her her planet
    4. And then, between the space of one breath and the next
    5. Naxen is gone.


  * Because Kalasin could not give the right answers.


  * One day a Togruta called Daine will stroke her hair and tell her there are no right answers to questions like that, and that it is not her fault, that Shili suffered for Daine and it is not Daine's fault either, neither of them is to blame – 
    1. But today Kalasin is alone.
  * Her mother was a genius. Her father commanded respect...


  * Kalasin Naxen falls to her knees and screams as her siblings and parents burn to dust, and she is left alone in the darkness.


  * Tarkin thinks he has broken Kalasin. 
    1. The Black Hand informs Tarkin that he is a moron.
    2. Tarkin does not listen.


  * On Naxen white is for mourning, and Tarkin knows this. In her cell Kalasin calls for her wardrobe and dresses in white. 
    1. Tarkin allows it.
    2. "You are stupid," says the Black Hand, and Tarkin does not listen. The Black Hand remembers that on Alderaan, birth planet of Thayet the Peerless, white is for purpose - and on Mandalore, home of Thayet's foremothers, white is for justice.
    3. Later Kalasin's beautiful wounded face will be beamed across the galaxy, the last Senator of Naxen, dressed in white, calling for justice, calling for Rebellion, and the Emperor will call Tarkin much worse than stupid.
    4. But that is all to come, and today Kalasin's fingers are trembling as she does up her buttons and wonders, if she'd tried to kill Tarkin, if she'd distracted him at a crucial moment, would Naxen have been saved?
    5. No.
    6. Kalasin lies down on her bed and goes to sleep.


  * She is woken by a stormtrooper pushing open her door. 
    1. She sits up and glowers. Daughter of Naxen, descendant of warriors, princess-presumptive of Carthak, wearing white for justice.
    2. "Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?"
    3. "Oh," says the boy under the helmet, who is her own age, who has red hair and hazel eyes. "No. We're here to rescue you."



 

 

This is the thing about **Thom Cooper**.

  * When you're the Lioness's son there are certain expectations. 
    1. That's how they put it. 'The Lioness's son'. Or sometimes 'cub'.
    2. Thom looks at the weary lines on his mother's face and the silver in her copper hair and knows he needs to be a lion, not a cub, for her sake. And for the sake of all the people who are counting on him.
    3. And Aly and Alan and Daine. But Thom was here first and the weight lies heaviest on him.
    4. He's enough of a Jedi - he feels best in the Force - but is he enough of a person? There are a  _lot_ of people counting on him. Thom knows the Force can be full of darkness, he's been to Mustafar and to Malachor and to Dagobah –
    5. Thom knows.


  * All things considered it's a lot easier to be the Whisper Man's boy, the one with the red hair and the uncanny ways, and since Da mostly raised him anyway... 
    1. An important parenthesis: Thom doesn't resent his mother. He understands. But sometimes he misses her.


  * Look, Thom often gets tangled up in his words, and he's certainly never been able to explain this coherently to his parents, but there are two things that make sense to him: 
    1. Being a Jedi, sunk in the Force, moving with its flow
    2. Flying the  _Dove_ with Da and his first mate Marek. 
      1. ...All right, so it's usually a bit of a mess.
      2. In fact, a lot of a mess.


  * But Thom has seen so much, and brought back so much information, so many Jedi things believed lost; he has crossed the stars and salvaged crystal from the Temple at Jedha, and once he even found a live Jedi.


  1. Thom will never forget the look on his mother's face when he brought Douglass back, and with him Sacherell's bones.
  2. Alanna has lost so much, and sometimes, this way, Thom gets to return a fragment or two.


  * "This is what I'm meant to do, Mama," Thom says, and his mother smiles at him like she's tired and proud, and says "All right, then." 
    1. His mother sits down on his father's lap and leans her head against his. George Cooper lets out a very long breath, puts his arm around Alanna the Lioness's waist and shuts his eyes.
    2. Thom gets up and leaves to give them privacy.
    3. He also herds Aly and Alan out of the way. Alan wants to be a Jedi Knight, which is fine, they're all very proud, but Aly wants to be a spy, and she seems not to have realised just how valuable the Lioness's daughter would be to the Empire if she were caught. 
      1. Aly is reckless, and Thom can't see her future. It worries him.


  * The next day they're sent to shadow a ship headed from Naxen to Carthak. 
    1. "Why are we doing this," Thom says.
    2. "As a favour to an old friend," George Cooper says.
    3. "What the fuck is that moon doing there," Marek snarls.


  * There's a moon where one shouldn't be, no planet where one should be, and a shockwave of pain and fear and grief has just pinned Thom to the wall.


  * Where did a  _whole planet_ go?


  * Thom clocks the weaponry on that 'moon', works it out, and hurries out of the cockpit to throw up. 


  * "Kalasin's ship registers onboard," his father is saying grimly when he comes back, "And I'm not trying to worry you, but that's a tractor beam." 
    1. "I told you all of this was a bad idea," Marek roars. "None of it changes anything for that poor kid. And as for the plans -"
    2. "Is that what we’re here for?" Thom says, confused. "To rescue Kalasin? Kalasin who?"
    3. "No," Marek says. "Sort of," Thom's Da says, and then he sighs. "I suppose that's what we're here for now. I hope your lightsaber lessons are going well, laddie. But don't leave anyone alive if they see it."
    4. This seems a lot more serious than the Rogue, is all Thom can think, which is ridiculous, because this is  _three hundred times_ the size of any trouble Hondo Ohnaka ever got himself into, including the Hutt thing. Thom doesn't have much time to realise this, though, because in short order, Thom is 
      1. dressed up as a stormtrooper
      2. sneaking through an Imperial ship that can fry whole planets
      3. on the lookout for an astromech, for some reason
      4. opening a cell door to find a young senator with red-rimmed blue eyes and a truly poisonous stare looking back at him.


  * "What kind of a rescue  _is_ this?" Kalasin Naxen cries about half an hour later, being too nicely brought up to shriek.


  * "The kind nobody got to plan!" Thom, who was not nicely brought up, shrieks back.


  * Marek has the astromech. At least, he has  _an_ Thom has the senator, who has confiscated his blaster and is doing an alarmingly good job with it. Da – 
    1. Da is duelling the Black Hand with a pair of vibroblades, which is so ridiculous Thom doesn't even know where to begin, and because vibroblades are no real match for plasma he is going to die in the next thirty seconds.
    2. "Go!" Da shouts. "Just go!"
    3. It's the only sensible thing for a spymaster in this situation to do. Da will never allow them to take him alive. Thom has never not followed his father's orders before.
    4. "Go ahead," Thom tells Kalasin, who doesn’t need telling twice.
    5. Thom stops, and takes a deep breath. 
      1. I am one with the Force, he thinks, and reaches out, and
      2. the Black Hand lowers his lightsaber and stares, and
      3. George Cooper comes flying across the hangar, and
      4. the Black Hand is blown back beyond the hangar doors.


  * "You're a Jedi," Senator Naxen says, once they're taking off. "Well," Thom says, "that's the idea."


  * "Oh, lad," Da says, once they're in hyperspace, "I am so proud of you. You should have left me to die." 
    1. Thom is speechless.
    2. Da takes him gently by the shoulders. "Now the Black Hand knows who you are."
    3. "Your son?" Thom hazards.
    4. "No," Da says. His bright eyes are old and tired. "Your mother's."


  * There is no time to explore this, because that's the moment Kalasin Naxen discovers the astromech handing a chip full of Death Star plans over to Marek, and has a total sense of humour failure. 
    1. Thom doesn’t sleep, all the way back to Yavin IV.
    2. Neither does his father.


  * There is a child waiting for them when they land, which is odd. She's about ten or twelve, tall and solidly built, with calm eyes and shields like a mountain, and when Thom looks at her he sees the next leader of the New Jedi Order, a foot taller and carrying a fuck-off enormous double-ended lightsaber. 
    1. All right, then. Thom will roll with that. Rather her than him.
    2. She sees something too, when she looks at him, but Thom has no idea what. He only knows she saw something because of the slight double-blink and the way her shields harden further.
    3. She introduces herself as Gary's padawan, which is new, as in last-three-days new, and honestly Thom's kind of surprised. Her name is Kel.
    4. She touches Kalasin's hand, and Kalasin breathes out, and the lines between her brows smooth away for a while.
    5. "Gary says he is your cousin," Kel says. "And he would like to offer you a meal and a berth until you are settled. However long that takes."
    6. "Cousin?" Kalasin's eyes narrow. "I was told my cousin's clone commander killed him during the Clone Wars."
    7. "I think he was believed dead for a long time," Thom says cautiously. How many lies did Jonathan Naxen tell his daughter? "But Uncle Raoul never raised a blaster to him. And just so you know, they're married."
    8. Kalasin is a politician. Her face does not flicker. Neither does Kel's. Thom doesn't want to know what kind of contortions his own is going through.


  * The next day, when the twins have gone to kitchens duty, Thom corrals his father, his mother, and his grandfather Myles in one room, bars the door to various admirals, and tells everyone it’s Jedi business.


  * His mother knows what he wants to ask before he says anything. 
    1. "The first thing you need to know," Alanna of Trebond says, "is that names are not destiny."



 

And this is the thing about **Keladry Mindelan**.

  * The only thing she has ever wanted is to serve the Rebellion. 
    1. This is not a huge surprise. Her father is a negotiator for the Rebellion, her mother his bodyguard. Kel is the youngest of a clan of fighters, administrators, engineers, translators, every last one a Rebel.
    2. The fact that she has enough of the Force to train as a Jedi Knight, however, is frankly astonishing.
    3. Conal always said she'd make the perfect droid tech; then no-one would have to like her.
    4. It's true she's very good with droids. People overlook them.
    5. But it's not  _special_. Unless maybe it is.


  * The day Naxen is destroyed, Kel is working on a seriously damaged X-wing astromech. It's been written off, which is why an eleven-year-old is allowed to tinker with it on her day off. 
    1. She almost has it perfect when a wave of misery and fear rolls through her, and Kel, quiet Kel, raised among Yamanis for whom emotion is disgrace, breaks down in floods of inconsolable tears.
    2. This is weird as hell until Alanna the Lioness barges into the engineering quarter in search of a traumatised youngling, and latches onto Kel like Kel is a scared kitten. 
      1. Kel is only three inches shorter than her, which is an obstacle, but the Lioness doesn't let it stand in her way.
    3. Then it's weird, but it's  _Force_ weird, which means that Kel will no longer be homeschooled by her mother or slotted into distance classes, but also means that Kel is now on an Imperial hitlist and has a thoroughly uncertain destiny. At least a droid tech could be a civilian. 
      * Swings and roundabouts, as the saying goes.
      * Piers and Ilane are very proud and also very terrified out of their fucking minds.


  * Kel would have liked to be Alanna's padawan, but it's not possible, for reasons Kel does not understand, and which appear to involve 
    1. The will of the Force
    2. The Black Hand's habit of trying to kill off everyone the Lioness loves.


  * Instead Alanna takes her to a deceptively battered ship, and introduces her to an enormous former clonetrooper with a welcoming smile who wears bespoke armour and a lot of tattoos, and a tall, skinny man with a lightsaber, datapads and flimsis stacked around him, and prematurely greying hair. 
    1. "Oh," says the Jedi. "You're our next padawan."
    2. "Our?" says Alanna, suspiciously.
    3. "Dibs," says the clone, whose name is Raoul.
    4. "Fine," says Alanna, propping her hands on her hips. "You explain it to her parents."


  * Tension follows on Yavin IV. The Death Star isn't in the system yet but it might not be far. 
    1. Kel knows she will now evacuate with Gary and Raoul, and possibly the Cooper twins. Not with her parents or siblings.
    2. She's a Jedi. That makes her a priority. That means she has to be saved from the Empire, and that leaves a hollow spot behind Kel's ribs.
    3. The sooner she can grow up and do the saving, the better.


  * "What are we waiting for?" she asks Gary, after a session of meditation, and an attempt at moving some small pebbles around. Today she brought half of her things to their ship,  _Third_ : Raoul says it's named after their old regiment, but it passes for part of a serial number. 
    1. "Hope," says Gary.
    2. One day, when Kel's a Knight, she's going to teach all her padawans that being enigmatic is unhelpful and pointless.


  * Hope turns out to be a senator from obliterated Naxen, who is beautiful and grieving and shielded better than Kel herself. Hope is accompanied by Thom Cooper, who Kel knows by reputation. 
    1. She looks at him, and sees him a few years older and one hand shorter, staggering forward from the darkened edges of a hall with all the light before him, and screaming -  _Mother, no_!
    2. She tries not to let it show in her face. She was very good at that when they lived in the Yamani Federation. He is not very good at it, but she has no idea what he saw. She'd be surprised if it was the same thing. 
      1. She likes what she knows of him, so she hopes it wasn't.
    3. She gives Senator Naxen Gary's message, and then she can't stop herself - she reaches out slightly and touches one of the senator's pale hands. 
      * Senator Naxen thinks she's alone, she thinks she is abandoned, she thinks she has nothing but a grim fight before her, she has lost every stone she ever called home, and Kel can't walk away from that. She can't.
      * The small victory of Kalasin's relief is why Kel wants to be a Jedi.


  * "Call me Kalasin," Senator Naxen says. "How long have you been a Jedi?" 
    1. "About four days," says Kel.
    2. Kalasin blinks. "I'm sure you'll be very good at it."
    3. "I hope so," Kel says. "Do you know what you plan to be yet?"
    4. It's not a fair question. She tries to say it delicately. But Kalasin is walking like someone with a plan.


  * Kalasin turns those dark blue eyes on Kel. She is perfectly calm and perfectly centred, her grief contained for the present, and the Force spins around her like a coin on a table. 
    1. Heads or tails? Kel thinks.
    2. "Justice," Kalasin says. "Mercy. Restitution."
    3. Well.
    4. Kel can check 'restitution' in the dictionary later, but none of that felt Dark.


  * "Well," Kel says. "I know you'll be good at that."



 


	3. What Happened Next

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Snippets regarding the fate of various characters from the previous chapters; yoicked from a chat with dovebalitang and tidied.

**Daine**

 

I'm not quite sure how Daine's arc works, though I am fairly sure she is about 50% Force by volume and the first time she turned all that on Alanna Alanna propelled herself backwards through a wall and complained of seeing spots for the rest of the day. But I feel like sticking to the canon timings, ish, so Daine's story happens before Kel's and Kalasin’s and Thom's.

 

She is definitely a Togruta huntress.

 

**Kalasin**

 

Kalasin and Thom develop a Thing over the course of the war. It's not a lasting one, they’re not really suited, but there are times - particularly during the war - when no-one understand the last Senator of Naxen like the Lioness's son and heir. They grow apart naturally even before peace is declared and develop a solid friendship, instead. A less fractious one than their parents', because they are both naturally inclined to negotiate. Kalasin never fights in the front lines, but aggressively negotiates her way across the galaxy, and takes part in more than one rearguard fuck-the-Empire's-here action. She becomes a Senator, and then President. To her surprise she has a relationship with Kaddar Iliniat, reforming lord of the Carthak system, but obviously it's politically impossible and neither of them can get the bad taste of their arranged match out of their mouths. But Kaddar is a good man, it could have been worse. Kalasin eventually marries the Princess Shinkokami, the finest politician she's ever met. Stepping down from the Presidency at 45, she makes the cause of her life creating a strong civil society with better checks and balances and an enforced charter of rights.

 

**Thom**

 

Thom fights. He fights to preserve, mainly, but also he spends a lot of time on the run, because the Black Hand knows he has a nephew and potential apprentice now. He worries about his mother a lot, a worry which is justified when Alanna voluntarily turns herself in to try to call the Black Hand back to the light. Thom follows her. He isn’t in time to witness Alanna's Fall and recovery, or Emperor Roger's electrocution of her. What he does see is the Black Hand lifting Alanna from the floor, and the two of them charging together and taking Roger down into the Death Star's core.

 

Thom is a much quieter man after that. He never voluntarily walks into battle again. He devotes his life to exploration and teaching, but his feet are always itchy so his classes are irregular. He goes down in history as the man who salvaged the history of the Jedi Order. History forgets that he watched his mother die. Thom the historian makes it that way.

 

**Kel**

 

Kel spends the war as an apprentice, a raiser of morale, a doer of the practical, a teacher of self-defence. Gary and Raoul are good teachers to her; they are like family. In a lot of ways (and this grieves Kel) they are her family. Not all the Mindelans make it out of the war.

 

Kel is fighting on the surface of Endor when the shockwaves of the Lioness's death force her to her knees. Raoul saves her, but at the cost of life-altering injuries. He says clones were always meant to die for their Jedi. Kel tells him to shut up.

 

After the war there are a lot more Force sensitives to deal with. Alanna's dead, Thom's broken, Gary's currently trying to glue a political system together out of tinfoil and tape, and Daine is fully occupied with disentangling the Empire's non-human slavery network. Kel steps up and Thom starts posting packages to Jedi Master Keladry Mindelan, Second Jedi Temple, New Jedi Order, Yavin IV, Yavin System. Kel calls him up at enormous expense to lecture him and the next parcel is addressed to the Jedi Grand Master.

 

Whatever. Kel has work to do.

 

Kel has brief relationships and many close friends. And she has Thom, most of whose laughter comes from teasing her. (She can't grudge it to him.) He flies into the Temple and brings her priceless relics, he stays as long as he can bear to help her understand them, then he goes. He trades, and funnels money into the Temple, uses what influence he has in Kel's favour, and occasionally kidnaps her for a holiday when Daine and George and Raoul say she needs one.

 

Kel doesn't realise that Thom is the only person she can't really do without until her latest temporary partner, Cleon, complains that he can't keep her attention. If Gary doesn't want to change the dates of his seminars on governance then Daine wants to know if she can take Kel's padawan hunting on Shili or Lalasa has a complaint to issue about the laundry, and the only person who can beat out those concerns is Thom.

 

"Well, he's got a point, Master Kel," Tobe says. "Also, are we meditating today or not?" They are, which sort of proves Cleon's point. Kel isn't surprised when they break up.

 

I don't know if they have kids, I know they don't get married, but Kel and Thom grow old together, and the Second Jedi Temple has a statue of each of them, on either side of the front door. In later years Kalasin Naxen's great-great-granddaughter Lianokami will cause a traffic jam by sitting there to meditate.

 

"I was called," she says to half-god Daine, who is already mostly one with the Force.

 

Daine rubs her forehead. "Odd's bobs," she sighs, finally. "Naxens."


	4. Chapter 4

Once upon a time on a planet called Shili, a huntress went into the plains and didn’t come back for several weeks, which was not unusual; and ten months later she gave birth to a daughter, which was not uncommon.

 

Sarra was a little stranger than that herself. A qualified doctor, when so few Togruta were even permitted to access more than basic educational facilities; never too open, but always skirting the line of Rebellion talking points; and permanently looking to the stars, and somehow looking past the Empire. She spent a lot of time out in the wilds, generally because she was making medical rounds of outlying villages, but sometimes for reasons no-one knew the answer to, and she always came back smiling.

 

She took Daine with her too, and people tried not to comment on the way the child sometimes seemed to glow, or the way things occasionally just happened around her, or her uncanny rapport with prey species that should have feared her and predators that should have challenged her, or -

 

Sarra’s entire village came down with a terrible epidemic of gastrointestinal ills when the Empire’s medical examiners came around. Sarra fought the epidemic almost alone, heroic and beautiful and noble, the perfect example of the best a xeno could be, safely tucked on an out-of-the-way planet with no political history or known record of sedition. The officer in charge wrote her a commendation, rooted out the industrialist responsible for poisoning the water source Sarra’s clan was sitting on top of - he hadn’t paid his bribe, so the jail term stuck - and failed to notice that the midichlorian test given to Veralidaine Sarrasri had not been correctly administered.

 

Sarra successfully danced on the back of this particular rabid akul until a few days after Daine’s thirteenth birthday, and then there was too much money to be got from the minerals under the clan lands, and Sarra was just a bit too visible, and her daughter was just a bit too strange, and there were those who were frightened or greedy.

 

Daine was out in the wilds ferrying medicines. She returned to find a slaughter at her mother’s house, an empty village, and a camp of diggers setting up in the space where it had been. Her clan-kin had neither waited nor left a message.  And maybe that meant saving her life by keeping her hidden, and maybe it meant they were too scared to offer her a home.

 

Daine didn’t think about any of it. She just opened her heart to the turmoil inside her, and allowed the Force to carry her where it would. The Imperial report on the destruction of the camp, complete with its heavy machinery, would describe it as a freak storm.

 

Daine, when she came to her senses, fled.

 

Months later, she found herself on the other side of the continent, watching a trader expertly size up blurrgs at the merchant fair. Good, sturdy beasts, Daine thought, leaning on her own Cloud and eyeing the animals. They’d carry a fair weight. These ones were smart, too, and they looked strong enough for off-world transport.  The trader was walking round them carefully, lips pursed.

 

Daine glanced down at her tiny, half-scrap datapad, and re-read the job advert and then looked at the trader. A hundred of her mother’s lessons about not drawing attention to herself rung in her head, along with terrible memories of the camp, and the things she’d done to it. She could keep just living wild, she’d survived so far, even though she was missing people, and even though it felt right to be here, and the thought of leaving felt terrifying.

 

Cloud growled and butted Daine forward, her large bulbous head propelling Daine directly into the electrified fence. Daine shrieked, which made the trader look up and Daine flush hot with embarrassment.

 

“Have you come about the job?” the trader said, doubtfully, looking at Daine as if she were too young. Internally, Daine prayed that she was one of those who’d be easy to convince Togruta just aged differently.

 

“Yes,” Daine said, clear and firm. “My name is Daine.”

 

 “I’m Onua,” said the trader. “Onua Chamtong.” She dusted her dirty hands on her trousers, and shook hands with Daine. It wasn’t a Togruta gesture, but Sarra, who knew her way around human respectability, had taught it to Daine long before. “Let’s talk about the job.”

 

***

 

The ship yawed desperately, and the blurrgs roared in the hold.

 

 _This is ridiculous!_ Cloud shouted, loud enough for Daine to hear. _We should have stayed on Shili!_

 

“It was your idea!” Daine shrieked back, too scared to remember she mustn’t.

 

“What the fuck is that kid talking about,” bawled Tahoi in the pilot’s seat, “and WHY ARE WE OUTRUNNING IMPERIALS, AGAIN.”

 

“They’re not officially Imperials!” Onua corrected, fingers dancing across her console. “And stop corrupting the kid -”

 

“I told you, just because she sometimes seems to understand me doesn’t mean she speaks Wookiee! She doesn’t, I checked! She’s just fucking odd!”

 

“ _Shut up!_ Oh, Numair, where the _hell_ are you - ha! _Yes_! Daine!”

 

“Yes?” Daine yelled, from her seat in what was technically a passenger bay, but hadn’t been used as such for about a decade.

 

“There’s an escape pod coming in just now. We’re going to outrun these Carthaki b- these Carthakis, but you said you had some medic training - could you just check on my friend, please?”

 

“Of course!” Daine shouted, and gingerly unsnapped her belt, levering herself to her feet and staggering into the hangar where the escape pod had come to rest on its side. The blurrgs, Daine’s sensitive nose detected, were unhappy with their present predicament. The cargo bay next door was redolent with their opinions.

 

 _THIS IS REVOLTING_ , Cloud said.

 

“I’ll muck you out once we’ve got rid of the Carthakis, Cloud, don’t fuss,” Daine said, hastily consulting the emergency manual and then hitting various switches until one of them popped the cover of the escape pod. The human inside - tall, mostly composed of lanky limbs and black hair flopping everywhere - slid halfway onto the floor without waking up.

 

“Hello?” Daine tried nervously, and tried to remember how to do a pain test on an unconscious human.

 

He was clutching a datapad in one hand. Daine pried his fingers off it on the basis that it couldn’t be good for him, and then realised that he hadn’t turned the device off before passing out. A wanted poster, annotated with hand-scribbled neon text over the top of the serious Imperial print, carried a picture of his face. It was an identifit picture, not a real holo or even a still image.

 

 _They’ve done a terrible job of my nose_ , said the neon text.

 

 _Arram Draper, wanted for crimes against the Empire, claims to be a Jedi; armed and dangerous, do not approach, reward three million credits,_ said the print.

 

The datapad fell from Daine’s nerveless fingers, and she stared at the unconscious Jedi in shock and horror.

  
“Odds bobs,” she said weakly, and was surprised to hear she still had a voice. “This is far, _far_ beyond the likes of me.”


	5. daughters of the rebellion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three moments of hope for three very different young women.

**Aly**

 

_ We don’t all have the luxury of deciding when and where we want to care about something _ , Nawat snaps in her memories, and Aly sprawls in a corner of the shuttle and grips the kyber crystal she picked up on Jedha in her fist until she feels like it’s going to cut into her palm. She’s not a Jedi, not like Thom or Alan, and that’s a good thing. Jedi aren’t supposed to get angry. But the crystal feels grounding, and Aly needs grounding.

Aly’s furious, and furious at herself for being furious, and it all tangles up in a bitter, spiteful knot inside her head, as intractable as her constant clashes with her mother. Nawat doesn’t have a kriffing clue about who she is or where she comes from – no-one does, and probably not even Dove has the background to guess, for all her wealthy upbringing, Imperial background, and fatal habit of nosing around for information. Aly made fucking sure that she doesn’t look or sound like a Rebel girl off Yavin – that was the only way she was surviving capture by pirates with Imperial links; she’s lucky her broken nose and fighter’s reputation kept her out of some Moff’s bed – and she hasn’t trusted any of them enough to tell them even part of the truth. Not the celebrated mother, not the sneaky father, not the Jedi brothers, nor the running for her life nor the target on her back, right from the first day she and Alan drew breath together.

Of course – her heart stutters slightly – it’s very possible Kyprioth knows who she is. Can recognise some affinity between her and her mother. She doesn’t understand him, but he breathes the Force, and from his smirk he knows about the kyber crystal, and he knows she’s Force-sensitive. But if he knows the danger she’s been in since she became separated from the diplomatic crew she joined, and he can likely guess, then he won’t care. What does it matter if she’s narrowly escaped being hauled before the Emperor a hundred times? What does it matter if Alianne Cooper is a name on every Imperial watchlist, and Aly Homewood seems set to join it, and the stakes are so high if she gets caught?

Ulasim and Ysul might care, though mostly to scold her. Dove might, and given that her own life has followed a parallel trajectory – though a much less selfish one – she wouldn’t scold, either. Nawat…

Aly sighs, and lets her head thump back against the panelling. She doesn’t know what Nawat would think.

She doesn’t know why she wishes she could tell him the truth.

She looks down at the kyber crystal, warm between her palms, and wonders what she’d make of it, if she had world enough and time.

A lightsaber is not her style – too big and flashy – but a knife, something small enough and subtle enough to keep around without frightening anyone, maybe something she could conceal as something else… that would suit her. And the crystal is calming, somehow. Less than twenty-four hours and she’d punch out any given stormtrooper to keep it by her side.

Her mother will show her how to turn it from crystal to blade, one day. Aly wraps her fingers around it, fans them open, disappears it up her sleeve in slow-motion.

Something to look forward to.

 

**Kel**

 

The Nothing Man didn’t go down easily, for all he was a poor student of the lightsaber; his poison was mainly in Dark words and the way he w arped the Force, but it’s still not easy to clear, especially with the persistent itch of a line of fire from his Zygerrian slaver caretaker’s electric whip. Kel nearly fell to that, and there’s a curling red line across her ribs and encircling one arm that she will probably always carry. Gary and Neal treated it partway, but hadn’t time or energy for more. Not with sixteen Force-sensitive children in varying degrees of trauma, physical and otherwise.

 

She folds her hands and doesn’t scratch. 

 

“Doing all right, Kel?” says a familiar warm voice, one matched by an equally familiar presence, and she looks up and into Raoul’s face. They’re of a height now, so Kel no longer looks up to him literally as well as metaphorically,  but Kel is sitting, her back against the bulkhead, and Raoul is crouching over her. Worry lines are deeply carved across his forehead, but they have eased a little, and his dark eyes are kind.

 

Kel nods. 

 

“You need something to eat. Gary always forgets.” Raoul produces ration bars and water, and she gulps them down reluctantly while he watches; she has never liked the taste of the bars, but she does feel better once they have gone down.

 

“ _ Vor’e _ ,” she says, and he smiles at the sound of the Mando’a.

 

“You frightened us,  _ vod’ika _ . You could easily have been killed or worse.”  He narrows his eyes at her. “It worked this time. Next time it might not.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Kel says, and means it. 

 

“Are you?” Raoul asks, raising his eyebrows, and looking around the limited passenger space of the  _ Third _ , which is packed with young Force-sensitives asleep on whatever can be found for them. Some less young. Neal has his head tipped back over the headrest of his chair and is snoring. 

 

“I’m sorry there wasn’t a better way of doing it,” Kel replies. “I’m sorry I frightened you.”

 

Raoul claps her gently on the shoulder, careful not to wake the children who have curled up close. Tiny Meech, with a copper tinge to his Rodian crest; fierce little Loey, tall and wiry for a pre-tween Twi’lek; Tobe, human and fiercely protective of Kel, already. Kel thinks she may have met her padawan, but he’s not even ten. There’s time yet. 

 

“Tell it to Gary,” Raoul says. “When you wake up.”

 

Kel smiles at him, and closes her eyes. Instead of trying to sleep, she meditates, and tries to think of every memory of being warm and safe and loved with her own family and project them out for the children, many of whom she knows are on the verge of nightmares. But she’s so tired she falls asleep anyway.

 

She wakes up to Tobe poking her, gently but repeatedly.

 

“Mister Neal snores,” he says. 

 

“Kick him,” Kel suggests.

 

He giggles furtively, and Kel smiles again. The sleep, or whatever she did in her sleep, has done them all good. The atmosphere is an order of magnitude lighter, even if Neal is still snoring.

 

Loey is also awake, and staring critically out of a porthole. “Where are we going now?” she says.

 

“Somewhere safe,” Kel says. “Where you can all grow up, and let adults do the fighting.”   
  
“That would be nice,” Loey says seriously. “Doesn’t sound likely, but it sounds nice. Promise me you’ll come and visit.”

 

Tobe rolls his eyes. Kel grins. “I promise.”

 

**Kalasin**

 

The sun rises over Endor’s moon as the fires’ embers burn low, and partygoers yawn and make for bedrolls, ferny little nooks, or whichever patch of ground seems closest and least inhospitable. Kalasin Naxen, incognito - or at least as incognito as she gets to be, with her hair loose and her clothes battered and patched and practical instead of the iconic hairstyle and white clothing she almost regrets ever having worn - is still awake.

 

A pilot, one of the few people left in the galaxy who can still address her fluently in her mother tongue, stops and stumblingly asks if she has anywhere to sleep.

 

“I’m fine,” Kalasin says quietly, and the pilot nods and carries on. She’s already sitting on someone else’s donated jacket, with someone else’s scarf bunched behind her neck to support her against the enormous tree she’s sat leaning against. Still more people have donated the various items draped over Thom, who is lying with his head in her lap, jaw slack, small snuffly noises occasionally emanating from his throat, finally fast asleep.

 

He didn’t seem well when Kalasin made it down onto the moon’s surface. She tracked him down standing over his mother’s pyre with a blank, lost face, and talking about the Black Hand, who had once been his own namesake, and who had apparently turned to the Light in the end, and who had died for it. As had Alanna. The weight of that loss hangs heavy on Kalasin’s heart.

 

She listened to Thom, and then she pulled him gently back to the party and plied him with food and drink and people who were already drunk enough to rejoice blindly, so that everything they said sounded so ridiculous Thom could only laugh shakily and nod along. After a while, when they’d both had enough, she tried to get him to sleep.

 

He couldn’t. Or at least, Kalasin thinks, combing her fingers through his copper hair and resting her free hand on the centre of his chest to feel it rise and fall, he hadn’t, not for hours. He closed his eyes to rest, and eventually, he slipped into sleep. 

 

Kalasin looks up, and squints into the dawn. Every now and then you can see little pieces of the Death Star flaring and burning up in the atmosphere, still falling to gravity. Its skeleton will make for a strange asteroid belt. But sooner or later it will be nothing more than dust and ashes, and Kalasin will live a life without nightmares of green light and lost worlds. Even if it takes the rest of her days.

 

The Emperor is dead, the Black Hand - his most terrifying servant - gone likewise. Many senior officers are also gone. The Empire is neither defenceless nor finished, but this is the most decisive blow that’s been struck against it since the Battle of Yavin. Kalasin takes her analyst training and runs a few quick calculations in her head, and comes up pleased. Their position is stronger; the Empire’s weaker. They have a real chance to end this decisively, if they strike during the power vacuum, and if Kalasin’s arguments hold any sway they will. Her family and planet have already been avenged, and now she will rebuild.

 

This, Kalasin thinks, is the beginning of the end, and for all they’ve lost, for all that will never be reclaimed, she still smiles.

 

Thom stirs in her lap and opens sleepy eyes. “Sorry,” he mumbles sleepily.

 

She shakes her head.

 

“You sleep,” Thom says, tugging lightly on her shirt. “Your turn.”   
  


“Not yet,” Kalasin says, eyes still on the sky. “This is a new day. I want to watch it dawn.”

 


End file.
